Our character

To have character means to be persistent in the pursuit of long term gratification, we do this through mutual commitment with our clients to energy transition, as an expression of our loyalty to climate goals. Free after Aristotle, our lema is that we are what we repeatedly do: Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

Where we come from

HOLTROP S.L.P. Transaction and Business Law is leading law Firm in the renewable energy, viticulture and international transactions sectors, although not exclusively limited to those. The two last words of our name reflect our desire to assess our clients in any legal problematic related to their business activity.

We are members of APPA(The Spanish Renewable Energies Industry Association), UNEF (the Spanish Photovoltaic Industry Union), the Platform for a New Energy Model, Secartys (a Spanish non-profit business group dedicated to the promotion and competitiveness of its members as well as the positioning of the Spanish industry abroad), The Catalan Energy Efficiency Cluster (CEEC), The Catalan Wine Cluster (Innovi), AEDIVE (The SpanishBusiness Association for the Development and Promotion of the Electric Vehicle) as well as the Catalan Biomass Cluster. We show our commitment to these organisations by offering frequent sponsoring, participation of our professionals at their panel discussions and with presentations held at the conferences organized by these associations.

Renewables

Our growth is the result of an approach that combines civil awareness and business competitiveness. We are a Firm which takes a clear position in favour of renewable energies, and we do not defend clients who are incompatible with this stance. The defence of the sector of renewable energies in Spain is a good example of that: we were awarded the Eurosolar Prize in 2015.

At present we defend over 3.500 installations of various renewable technologies, which are owed by thousands of private individuals and hundreds of small, medium-sized and large cap companies, some of which are listed at the IBEX 35.

These litigations are a necessary harm to regain legal certainty in Europe, starting in Spain. We do all we can to obtain a favourable decision from the European Court of Justice. Our firm has high media visibility, and we consider it our duty to transmit our educational and nuanced message about the electricity sector to the general public.

Our claims and complaints before the European Commission and European Parliament are of special importance and have been subscribed by almost the whole of the Spanish renewable energy sector.

Viticulture

With less visibility but with coherence, we also act in other sectors. The food sector, and specifically viticulture, have been the second focus point of our Firm and of its founder Piet Holtrop since the beginning of his wanderings in Spain. Our Firm has always had a strong transactional work load. In 2015 we advised the buyer company SPI Group in its operation to purchase the cellar Señorío de Arínzano property of Gran Feudo group, which is in turn mostly owned by the FENIX fund, a consortium comprised by BBVA, Banco Santander, CaixaBank, Sabadell, Bankia and Popular, assessed by Gómez Acebo-Pombo. In the following years we will close several more transactions in the same sector which are already under way. The first relevant experience in this field was an M&A operation in 2002, relating to a cellar in the Priorat region, in which Piet Holtrop intervened, who at that time was still collaborating with another Firm.

Transactional practice

When we talk about transactions, HOLTROP S.L.P. Transaction & Business Law has been conceived from its beginning as a business advisory oriented Firm, with special focus on international transactions, mainly company acquisitions. In most of the operations in which we advise, we represent foreign buyers, although the trend of the last years has increasingly been to represent both national buyers and sellers.

The first transaction in the renewable sector was in 2001, year from which Piet Holtrop became committed to APPA as a collaborating partner. Our firm sponsors the Study of the Macroeconomic Impact of Renewable Energies in Spain since 2009. Since then, we have intervened in several tens of operations and transactions involving renewable assets. Generally, our advisory work has been related to transactions with international elements, and although the food and renewable sectors stand out, it has not been limited to companies in these areas. The Fashion sector is another one where we have intervened in some main operations. We can count with some big Fashion companies among our customers and we have assessed in the opening of the Flagship stores of those companies in Spain. Finally, it is worth mentioning our participation in different platforms in the line of transactions with citizen participation, such as Ecrowd or Firmeza Solar and the advice for the project of Crowdfunding Citizen Energy.

Specialisation

We believe in specialisation because we want to excel in everything we do. Limiting ourselves to a few regulated sectors, with very specific dynamics, we have placed ourselves in a market niche where we have managed to become highly competitive.

The constant regulatory changes of the regulated sectors require a continuous update of on the latest legislation by our lawyers who have to analyse the legal contingencies within a transaction, involving assets affected by those changes.

Experience

Our Firm undertakes a very relevant litigious praxis in the defence of renewables. This circumstance is decisive to our analytical capacity of the aforementioned regulatory changes, both in the sphere of drafting due diligence reports, as for negotiating guarantees from them. As a necessary aspect of our litigation work against the different and continuous cutbacks to the productive installations of renewable energies we have had to perform work equivalent to due diligence reports of over 3.500 Photovoltaic, Wind, Mini Small hydraulic and Cogeneration installations. Right now, few firms are in this privileged situation, beneficial for our customers and for us. They perceive it from the economic conditions they receive for our services, and we perceive it from their response.

Other legal approaches

Our special emphasis in the area of intellectual property is a necessary complement in the counsel for transactions which entail the transmission of trademarks and other intellectual property. By all means, we also have a good understanding of corporate, company, employment and administrative law in order to cover all necessary elements of a due diligence report. In another line of work, because of the lamentable situation brought on the renewables sector, although we do not act as receivers, we do have a lot of experience in the restructuring of assets affected by insolvency, operations known as turnaround. Also, European Law will evolve into a field of activity in our Firm beyond the renewable energy sector, where it currently has its most notable presence. Finally, we can observe interesting developments in the field of smart cities, where we are starting to advise in subjects like energy efficiency, district heating and cooling, smart networks, self-consumption or electric vehicles.

Communication

Communication and its dynamics can make or break a business negotiation. The command of different languages is a basic requirement to achieve a satisfactory result; we offer advice in Spanish, Catalan, English, French, Dutch, Italian and German. We have extensive cross-border experience having carried out operations between Spain and countries like France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, the US or Argentina. When negotiating conditions of a transaction, we bring together that intercultural experience with creativity and deep legal understanding of the transactional world. We are renowned as good facilitators to successful transactions, always paying maximum attention to detail in order not to leave any contingency unattended.

Our fees reflect our involvement

We work with Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFA), which are alternative modalities of tariffing. Hourly invoicing and the classic categorization of the lawyer based on experience have lost prominence in the legal world and as such, do not exist in the conditions we offer. The closest we get to it is with our blended hourly rate of 250 €. In other words, any of our lawyers would invoice at this rate when a task would be hour based. We generally offer discounts of up to 30% of the tariff when we estimate a lot of hours will be required, and even higher if we include a success fee. However, we use closed budgets with fixed costs when it is possible to make an estimation. For projects we have very much under control, such as Due Diligence, we charge a rate by tasks, rather than for the hours employed. In the vast majority of our engagements we participate in the risk of our clients by including success fees clauses.

The aim of our economic fee proposals is that the client is able to anticipate the total cost of our service without experiencing any negative surprises in the invoices, and with some participation on our side in the litigious or transactional risk. We wish to establish long lasting relationships with our clients, and grow with them.

Where to find us

Through our blog www.holtropblog.com you can follow our latest news and at 10 Via Augusta, 3rd floor, we will be delighted to welcome you and tell you everything you need to know about us.